


Open Options

by matrixrefugee



Category: Tales of Pain and Wonder - Caitlin R. Kiernan
Genre: F/M, mentions of drug use and sex for trade.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 12:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18604828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: When their world is based on transiency, the same goes for their relationship.





	Open Options

**Author's Note:**

> Written for < lj user="love_bingo">'s "open relationship". Featuring Salmagundi Desvernene and Jimmy DeSade and a whole lot of low key drama. Warning: mentions of drug use and sex for trade.

"Not tonight, Jimmy, I've got other company," Salamagundi would say, shooing him out of her one-room boudoir, cluttered with the splendid detritus culled from her family's defunct estate, rubbish that normally would end up in some antique dealer's. Some of it she had sold off already to buy the powder that kept her inspired, but some pieces she refused to part with. And when that happened or Jimmy could not scare up some better quality stuff, she would resort to other means of payment. Other times, she would offer the same payment to the manager of a performance space, when she lacked the cash to pay the rent, or when the take from the tickets did not match the price, or would have garnished their take. Salamagundi was not above starving for her art, but they had to pay their rent to the flophouse keeper and there were the hangers-on, the lost children brought in from the streets to tend to.

Nights like that, Jimmy would perch himself on the fire escape of the floor above her window, like some lean gargoyle in black jeans and a black leather jacket -- he could not bear to be outside her door or her window during these sessions. He understood this, understood why she did what she did. These men, and in some cases women, meant nothing to her: artists had had patrons since time immemorial and that sometimes meant payment with the most intimate currency or stock in trade imaginable. The dearest coin a person could pay with. He did not try to stop her: she had saved him from a similar fate, from paying with his body to the greasy-handed men who haunted the shadows in Times Square.

She reminded him of his mother that way, for she, too, had paid with her flesh to keep body and soul together and to feed him and his sister. And just as he had as a kid, he resented the men and women who shared the woman's bed, even if it was but for an hour. Predators, all of them, taking advantage of her need, hyenas taking down the weak of the herd. But that kept them from going after the younger and weaker in her care. But unlike his mother, she did this only when she had no other choice, when all other resources, any cash in the tin box she kept in her dressing table had been spent. She had her art for which she lived, unlike his mother, who consistently crawled into a bottle for solace.

Times like this, Ariadne would attempt to be Freudian about the situation, that Salamagundi did this because her biological father had never been around for her. And this kind of bat's chatter would make him want to grab her books and toss them out the window, something he refrained from doing: people had been hard enough on Ariadne, and if there was one thing he did not want to do, it was harm her. Especially not after he and Salamagundi had gone to so much trouble to get her away from a worse situation.

He had contemplated marrying Salamagundi, except that he was too young for her, and besides, it did not fit in with their template, he thought, lighting a cigarette. The family was a fluid group of transient kids and hangers on, why should the parents be completely carved in stone? Salamagundi herself did not hold with the notion: her parents' failed marriage, something that had mouldered for years before her father finally kicked it, about the time that the family business completely caved in on itself, had put her off the ring completely.

No, better to let her do what she had to do, to provide for the family when he could not. Better to keep their options open.


End file.
